Democrats Plotting To Use Death Tax To Soak the Rich of the Next Generation

Death and taxes are the only certainties, and today’s Democrats seem intent on making sure both ensnare the Baby Boomers. The logic of the actuarial tables indicates that much of the property of Americans born between 1946 and 1964 — some $93 trillion in all, a new study finds — will soon pass down to their heirs. It’s being touted as a historic transfer of wealth, and leftists are already salivating at the idea of getting a cut. Democratic lawmakers, in Congress and in the states, are putting forward proposals to hike estate levies, and change tax calculations, to capture some of the trillions of dollars in assets accumulated by the Baby Boomers. More revenue isn’t the only goal, though, as leftists seem eager to punish the boomer generation for its success. The tenor of the rhetoric suggests that the left is set to take class warfare beyond the grave. The prospect of passing on wealth, after all, is a motivator for many hard-working and successful parents. Yet Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland speaks of “Taxing Dynastic Wealth” by subjecting more Americans to estate levies. President Trump and Republicans, he laments, “are fueling the rise of an American aristocracy.” Recent estate tax cuts, he warns, “have allowed the country’s richest people to leave increasingly exorbitant sums of wealth to their heirs.”Another recent proposal by Senate Democrats aims to end the stepped-up tax basis for capital gains on inherited assets. This is a back door to reimposing taxes on many otherwise exempt estates. Currently there is no federal tax on estates worth up to $15 million for individuals, or $30 million for married couples. If capital gains are taxed, heirs would pay levies on inherited assets that reflect decades of investment accumulation — and inflation. The current system, Senator Cory Booker has said, is “subsidizing the richest households,” fueling “an extraordinary wealth gap, especially by race.” This demagoguery overlooks the fact that for, say, farmers and small family-owned businesses, estate taxes amount to an existential threat. If the proposals in Congress are alarming, the ideas emerging at the state level from Mayor Zohran Mamdani and his fellow Democratic Socialists are even worse.New York State currently exempts estates worth up to $7 million from taxation upon death. Yet a proposal brewing at City Hall, the New York Post reports, would cut that exemption by some 90 percent, to only $750,000. The goal was to find some $4 billion in revenue to fund Hizzoner’s inflated spending. The estate tax hike hasn’t advanced beyond the discussion stage yet, but it’s viewed as a priority among Mr. Mamdani’s far-left camarilla, per the Post.Estate taxes were an aberration for most of our history. A stamp tax on wills arose in 1797 but proved unpopular and was repealed by 1802. A Civil War-era estate tax was eliminated in 1870. The modern estate tax emerged in 1916 with a top levy of 10 percent and exemptions for most Americans. By 1935, the top rate soared to a confiscatory 70 percent. That eviscerated the incentive for Americans to save and accumulate wealth for their families.It’s an issue that will likely bear on voters’ decisions in the midterms and 2028. In 2016, after all, Mr. Trump campaigned on ending the estate tax, while Secretary Hillary Clinton proposed raising the top death levy to a level, 65 percent, not seen since the 1980s. Proposals like Mr. Mamdani’s reflect the fact that for all the Democrats’ talk of using the estate tax to soak the rich, the middle class would end up bearing the brunt of the left’s drive to boost death levies.

Democrats Plotting To Use Death Tax To Soak the Rich of the Next Generation

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